Goat
The Goats are a ledgendary unit that has been around since the inception of Belegarth. They are famous for shenanigans back in the day, incredible tolerance to the brew, and some of the best cooking at events ever. They are always posting new info to their website: http://www.goatlair.com and a huge thanks to the goats must go out for putting up with Belegarth, because we used their messageboards to start the initial contacts to build Belegarth.
Members
History Taken from the GoatLair.com
Most people we meet are surprised that we would willingly choose to call ourselves "Goats." As a Russian friend once told us, "In my country, there is no way you can insult a man worse than to call him a goat." It may not be quite that insulting in America, but the word "goat" definitely carries a negative connotation. Many people are surprised to hear that the name we wear so proudly now, actually began as an insult for us as well.
It all started way back in 1992. We were freshmen in high school, hanging out with our friend Vince. Vince's younger brother, Adam, was always creative with his insults and slurs. This night was no different. In a mocking tone, he said to us, "You guys are just a bunch of mules. You know what? You're not even mules, you're just a bunch of goats!"
Laughing at Adam's stupid insult, Ian said, "Well, If I'm a goat, I'm not just any goat, I'm The Goatlord!" Not willing to be outdone, Kyle said, "Oh yeah? Well then I'm the Overgoat, like an overlord of goats." This also worked out well since Kyle was taller than the rest of his friends and stood "over" them. Laughing at the stupidity of all of this, we joked that Matt would have to be called "Frogoat" since he had a huge, fuzzy afro at the time.
The Goat phenomena exploded from there. All of our close friends took "Goat names" and other people begged to be included in "The Goats." Ironically, Adam, who started everything with the insult, later became a Goat himself. Since he was the youngest of all of us, we named him "Goatbaby." Of course, he hated this name and tried to change it numerous times to no avail.
Later on, several of us Goats heard about this thing called "Dagorhir." Dagorhir was a medieval reenactment group that fought with padded weapons. Most of the Goats were huge fans of medieval fantasy and had been beating each other up with padded weapons for years. An organized medieval fighting group, like Dagorhir, was a dream come true for us.
Like almost everyone else who starts in Dagorhir, we sucked pretty badly when we began. But unlike most, we fought well together and were fearless of our much better opponents. Despite being over matched singly, we would attack with wolf pack like tactics and overcome the Dagorhir veterans. The current leader of our local Dagorhir group, John, a.k.a. Lord Alberich, was annoyed at our effectiveness, and split us up into different units. In a rare show of eloquence Adam voiced it best when he said, "John, you can take me out of the Goats, but you can't take the Goat out of me!" John just muttered under his breath, "God damned Goats." We were destined to hear that same phrase many more times in the future.
We fought for a little over a year with the group until our personal differences with John, and some details of his past came to light and we quit the group. About two years later, a good friend of ours, Erik a.k.a. Sir Zaknafien, a friend we'd introduced to Dagorhir, told us we should come back and go to the National event called Ragnarok. He told us the John had been kicked out and the group was now run by a knight's council. So we trained hard for one week and went straight to our first national event, Ragnarok XII.
Well, as the cliché goes, everything after that is history!